A mass attack targeting personal electronic devices belonging to members of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, which has so far killed at least 20 people and injured nearly 3,000, is undoubtedly a deliberate attack by Israel. The attack, which began on Tuesday, continued on Wednesday. On the same day, at least nine people were reportedly killed and dozens injured when other personal communication devices exploded at the funeral of those killed in the attack a day earlier.

This ongoing attack can only be described as terrorist in nature. Although unprecedented in its scale and method, its disruptive nature is nothing new to Israel. In fact, Israel's principle of inflicting great harm on civilians is named after the Dahiya district of Beirut, the epicenter of this attack. Recent events show how indifferent Israel is to human life. But this situation is normal for Israel, although the Western press never writes about it...

Western media interpretation

The New York Times team of Patrick Kingsley, Euan Ward, Ronen Bergman, and Michael Livenson wrote that Israel was involved in the attack, but tried to mitigate the Zionist blame as much as possible.

The Times reported:

"American and other officials briefed on the attack said Israel had hidden explosives in a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers brought to Lebanon. One or two ounces of explosives were placed near the battery of each pager, two officials said. According to some officials, the pagers ordered by Hezbollah from Taiwan's Gold Apollo were altered before they arrived in Lebanon. "Given the size of the explosive device, Israel underestimated the risk of harming people not affiliated with Hezbollah."

The Times also wrote that "the explosions appeared to be the last point in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7." And that means describing a simple military action, not an overtly unprovoked and deadly attack on civilians. Just yesterday, American whistleblower Edward Snowden correctly assessed the direction and impact of the attack:

"What Israel has done by *any* means is absolute negligence. They blew up drivers (i.e. out-of-control cars), women waiting in line for shopping (with baby carriages) and other civilians. It is no different from terrorism."

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's leading political analyst, made a point that is particularly important to Western audiences:

"A bit of 'role-playing' here might be useful for a global audience." Imagine if 1,200 people working at the Pentagon, State Department, and CIA had a pager go off in their faces, hands, and stomachs. How do you think the US will react to this?"

The Times described Israel's "long history of using technology to conduct covert operations against Iran and groups it supports" as a remarkable technological breakthrough. But to really understand what Israel is doing here, we only need to look at the history of its brutal attacks. This is relevant not only historically, but also strategically and geographically.

A path from brutal attacks to genocide

The term "Dahiya doctrine" is derived from the name of the Dahiya district of Beirut, which Israel targeted and razed to the ground during the 2006 war. Many families connected to Hezbollah lived in this district.

In 2008, Gadi Eisenkot, then military chief of the Northern Command (later Chief of Staff and centrist minister), issued the doctrine, warning of the "fate that awaits" any enemy who dares to attack Israel:

"What happened in Beirut's Dahiya district in 2006 will be repeated in every village where fire is fired against Israel... We will use disproportionate force [on such villages] and cause great damage and destruction there. For us, these lands are not villages inhabited by civilians, but military bases."

Israel used this method in its attack on Gaza in 2008-2009. The UN's 2009 Goldstone Report concluded that Israel had carried out "an attack aimed at punishing, humiliating and intimidating ordinary civilians" and called the abuses an exercise of the "Dahiya Doctrine". From this it becomes clear that this satanic teaching includes "punishment, humiliation and intimidation".

The attack on Gaza showed that this doctrine has turned into a full-fledged genocide. This is not surprising, since intentional harm to civilians as a logic of "war" was originally at the core of this doctrine.

Now, Israel is blowing up pagers. Judging from recent events, it is true that the Western mass media do not consider this act as terrorism. For Israel, this is still a radical idea, because "terror" has become a political term that applies only to the enemies of the West and Muslims.